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autoboot128.txt
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1990-02-12
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"Universal Autoboot Creator"
Creates autobootable disks. To use, select the device number of the
drive on which you wish to make an autobootable disk. And answer the
remaining prompts. You can abort the whole process at a couple of
points. At the enter-program-name prompt, should you think to yourself,
oh, I can't remember the filename I want to boot here, you can merely
space out the default name to quit the program so you can check the
directory before starting again.
The program is flexible enough it asks you for both the unit number of
the drive on which shall be made an autobootable disk, and for the unit
number of the file to run. So those are independent selections. Use
'*' for the runtime unit. If you do use any unit number other than 8 at
the first prompt, you will need to use the BOOT command to boot the
drive.
This program is very similar to the autoboot maker program on the 1581
demo disk. Reason for this is that it derives from that program. To it
was added an option that seemed needed. If you start off with a blank
disk, you may want to make it autobootable later on. And likely you
couldn't do it later on, because there are a bunch of files on disk, and
the boot sector is now allocated for one of those files you put there.
So it gives you an option to pre-allocate the sector. You can do this
when starting out with a blank disk. No autoexec. This may also be
used if you wish to stop a disk from autobooting.
Autobooting disks created with UAC have this property: you can abort the
autoboot process. When your C128 proceeds to autoboot the disk, hold
down Control-C and the process is canceled.
UAC adapts to the following drives: 1541, 1571, 1581, CMD drives, native
mode partitions, emulated partitions...
One last touch. There is a provision to let the user arrange the BASIC
commands to execute upon autoboot. Type RUN 9999 and it will let you
enter a command. It may not be intuitive how this all works, and I
shan't explain any intricasies any further, so beginneers should
certainly avoid this. If you try this, what you answer for the program
name prompt is merely what is printed on boot-up.
Most of the autoboot maker programs you may have come across have a
number of problems. The one on my 1571 demo disk, the one on my 1581
demo disk, and the one on my HD demo disk are all perhaps poorly
formed... well, they work, but certainly are prone to do something odd
some time or other. The 81 demo disk one was the nicest one, and fewest
problems.
If you ever validate an autobootable disk, you should run this program
again, because validating will de-allocate the boot sector and reserve
it again for regular file storage.
- Adam Vardy